The Sylvia Hotel
A Classic By the Bay
The Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver’s English Bay is an historic building located at 1154 Gilford Street alongside Stanley Park. The hotel has been a significant Vancouver landmark for almost ten decades.
Guests who visit The Sylvia today come for the special old-world charm of squeaky elevators and unique-style rooms and suites. Two ancient, throne-like chairs grace the foyer as you enter the hotel, and everywhere you look there is a strong sense of history. In addition, visitors savor first-class meals in the Beachside Dining Room with its adjoining Bistro and cocktail lounge overlooking the beauty of English Bay. The Sylvia doesn’t try to compete with the more modern upscale, uptown hotels. She stands apart with a long reputation of good service mingled with the ambience of a whole different age.
Certainly, the same Sylvia guests do keep returning year after year, and their frequent visits are obviously due to outstanding service by a friendly, unchanging staff who are all a part of the charm of that bygone era.
So, who was Sylvia, for whom the hotel was originally named?
Sylvia was the 12-year-old daughter of Abraham and Sarah Goldstein. In 1912, Abraham, a Vancouver developer, hired Seattle architect, W.P. White, to design a prestigious apartment building in English Bay. It was constructed by Booker, Campbell and Whipple Construction and was called the Sylvia Court Apartments in honor of Goldstein’s daughter. At that time, it was also the tallest building in downtown Vancouver. And, like the landmark building named for her, young Sylvia Goldstein also grew up to become something of a legend.
Sylvia spent her childhood in Vancouver’s West End. She was a strong swimmer who practiced regularly in the waters of English Bay under the tutelage of Joe Fortes, Vancouver’s first official lifeguard. Barbados-born Seraphim (Joe) Fortes had arrived in Vancouver via England in 1885 aboard the Robert Kerr and soon became a well-loved Vancouver citizen. He worked hard at many things— shoeshine boy, handyman and porter before becoming a bartender at the popular Bodega Saloon. He lived in a cabin in English Bay where the beach became his home where he gave swimming lessons to children who all fondly referred to him simply as “old black Joe.” Sylvia Goldstein was taught by the best and her strong swimming abilities soon gained her much acclaim, including winning a prestigious race she once entered between English Bay and Kitsilano Beach.
After completing a degree at the University of British Columbia, Sylvia moved with her family to California in the 1920s. By then, the Sylvia Court Apartments, like many other buildings and homes in the area, had fallen on hard times. By 1936 the Sylvia was in receivership and was transformed into an apartment hotel. By the beginning of World War II, many of the suites had been converted into single rooms to accommodate the crews of the merchant marine.
Long before that, however, Sylvia Goldstein had returned to Vancouver. While taking a boat trip with a group of other young Jewish singles, she had caught the attention of her future husband, Harry Ablowitz, by diving off the boat into False Creek. The couple were married in 1928 and settled in North Vancouver. Together they founded the Harry Ablowitz Realty Company.
Both Sylvia and Harry Ablowitz were also very active in the Vancouver business community and in numerous Jewish organizations. Sylvia herself sat on the board of many Jewish community groups and helped to establish the Jewish Community Centre, the Louis Brier Home, a hospital at Oak and 41st Avenue, and a golf course. She was a member of the National Council of Jewish Women and, until her mid-90s, was still volunteering her services with the Jewish Family Service Agency, doing telephone checks for isolated seniors and helping in any way that she could.
Meanwhile, her name-sake hotel was undergoing more changes. After WWII, the number of permanent residents in the hotel began to decrease. In 1954, the hotel opened the very first cocktail bar in Vancouver, and until 1958 was still the tallest building in the West End. The brick and terracotta exterior had been softened through the years by the growth of the Virginia creeper covering its starkness and adding an olde-worlde charm to the grand old lady.
By the 1960s, the Sylvia had also become a full-service hotel. Prior to the building boom in the west end during the 1960s, the Sylvia’s dining room, then on the eighth floor, had a restaurant slogan of “first-class dining in the sky,” It was later relocated to ground level. In 1976, the Sylvia Hotel was designated as a Heritage Building, ensuring its survival as a landmark building in English Bay for years to come. When Sylvia (Goldstein) Ablowitz passed away at the age of 102 in April of 2002, the hotel flew its flag at half-mast.
Many famous people have also graced the halls of the Sylvia including such notables as English poet and novelist, Malcolm Lowry, known best for his novel Under The Volcano; poet Robert Service, best-known for his writings on the Canadian North including The Shooting of Dan McGrew; Roderick Haig-Brown, Canadian writer and conservationist; and film actor Errol Flynn, famous for his swashbuckling roles in Hollywood films. Whenever he came to Vancouver, Flynn frequently stayed at the Sylvia, and in 1959 died in a friend’s West End apartment not far from the hotel.
If you visit the Sylvia today, you can fantasize about whether you are staying in the room where one of these notables once slept. It is certainly worth a visit to soak in all the history.